End-of-year action-thriller Take Point opened in Taiwan on December 28 across 85 screens, the largest release ever accorded to a Korean film in the market. This means that the explosive Korean blockbuster from director KIM Byung-woo, with HA Jung-woo in the lead, will be screening at 90% of the multiplexes in the island nation.

HA features as the leader of an elite mercenary force hired by the CIA to infiltrate an underground bunker in the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) to abduct the leader of North Korea on the eve of the US presidential elections in 2024. LEE Sun-kyun (A Hard Day, 2014) plays a North Korean doctor he comes across in the bunker while Hollywood stars Kevin DURAND and Jennifer EHLE play one of his team members and his CIA handler, respectively.

The Taiwanese exhibition market has proven to be a fruitful one for select Korean blockbusters of late, in particular for the zombie thriller TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016), the period action-drama The Battleship Island (2017) and the fantasy epics Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds (2017) and Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days.

A representative from distributor CJ Entertainment explained that Take Point is drawing interest from buyers ahead of February’s European Film Market at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film has already scored several sales and was released in North America and Singapore on December 27, while upcoming January releases include Malaysia on the 4, Indonesia on the 11, Hong Kong on the 24 and the Philippines on the 30.

Take Point debuted on top of the charts in Korea, where it opened on December 26, with 219,000 viewers. Director KIM and his leading man HA previously scored a box office hit in 2013 with the tense chamber thriller The Terror, LIVE.